Welcome to Jazz Guitar Lessons, where we help guitarists to learn jazz faster, express themselves more fluently, and have fun along the way. My name is Mark, and if you're looking to learn jazz, form better practice habits, and especially if you enjoy French accent, make sure to subscribe. Hey, guys, it's Mark from jazz Guitar lessons. Welcome to my neighborhood. This is a little walk with the birds, and maybe we're going to have some rain. And there's three main obstacles I wanted to talk about as I work with you guys to try and expand your jazz star skills and think of ways that are, you know, beyond learning a bunch of scales and learning a bunch of tunes and being told you can't play until you transcribe decimal ten West Montgomery solos, I want to expose three main things.
One will relate to the scales and the improv side of things. The other one will relate to how to organize our our time for efficiency and enjoyment, actually. And the third one relates to, getting feedback and using an expert to perhaps get better much faster. So off we go. First topic there is a, I think, a misperception, a paradigm where lots of people that I work with will believe that, say, doing a certain thing is the roadmap towards achieving something else. Let me clarify. I assume you want to work on all the things you are and you say, well, I know the chords and I've learned a melody and now the first part is in a right, and it does mean that I have to learn all my keys, a A-flat all over the fretboard. So I will typically have to talk and go like, okay, well, let me get this clear. We have a progression of chords. So all the things you are namely top of mind, F minor, 7507, E-flat seven, E-flat major, seven, D-flat major, seven, D minor, 77, C major, first eight bars. You want to improvise through this, and you're telling me that doing that, which I don't have a video of because I'm not in the studio. You're telling me that doing a scale here and scale here and a scale here will magically, promote your ability to be able to make confident, clear, improvization lines. And that's when I ask and propose, like, well, do you see that perhaps practicing the scales is tangentially related to getting that results? But to get the results of improvising, it's not like magically you learn a bunch of scales and then you're confronted with a group, a band or backing track, and then boom, you can improvise. That's not true. So why don't we think of different methods or paradigms for making, making melodic statements? I'll give you a few ones. How about digging into the melody of the song, just like randomly? Why don't we dig in the melody and start to ornament the melody? I know, cheesy, easy, but yeah, I played a tune. how about maybe starting to to memorize the the chord changes like I've just done yet? Seven minus seven B-flat minor set where people know it's in A-flat. Okay, but how about, like, memorizing those chords? Wouldn't that be a better use of your time than just learning a bunch of scales? Positions? Right. how about, looking at the court tone? So the third in the fifth and the seventh, how about we look at those and try to anchor those within our improv rather than going after all this materials? So that's a way for me. Like there's this wall and it's a way for me to dissolve the wall or the, the, the made up belief, the made up roadblock that it's because I don't know my scales that I can't improvise. Right. And that's just one example. That's a, mental mindset reframing. And what I think this wall or this fictional created wall proposes as an obstacle. It's reinforce, maybe a false belief that I can't do it or I'm not good enough yet, or I can't really do it because, you know, the masters have told me this, and because I haven't really done all these steps, it means I can't do it right. It reinforce that. And plus, I think it does give, what we could call an excuse for not to actually do it. So that's dissolving a roadblock. There you have it. Whenever, I come across students that have a means to an end. Now, we just talked about skill positions. I will tell them. Yes, but what is what is the thing that you're trying to do? And if you're saying, well, I want to improvise, I will typically say, well, let's just do that. Let's do that then. And what I want to learn my skill. You want to learn your skill in order to improvise. So let's just jump on the thing. typically we'll be playing songs as well. People don't believe they can sit in and play entire songs, they will make these excuses that they want to learn all the drop two inversions before they play the tune. So I'm like, well, drop two inversions are fine, but can you actually just get to do the thing that you want to do? And this boils boils up a lot of resistance and and talks and and and arguments and saying no, no, no, no, no. You know, Barry Harris said that's what we have to it's like, yeah, yeah, it's a it's the truth that maybe it's just a part of the truth. So that's the first main obstacle.
Yeah. I wonder what the people in the neighborhood think. The guy walking with his phone and blue shirt. It's not a blue blue shirt, but it's your shirt. Good. now, I may climb up the hill and get a bit winded, so you have to forgive me. The second thing I want to tell you, it's quicker, much shorter, is using, an excuse that there's too much of practice in order to, convince myself that that's the reason why I'm not good enough or I haven't really taken the steps. It reminds me of a student I worked with about 15 years ago that said, Mark, you've given me too much, and that's a classic story. I keep bringing it up because I made and decided upon a practice plan for him, and a practice plan was percentage. So it was like 3 or 4 things to practice by percentage going like, hey dude, if you have 30 minutes to split your practice time in these percentage, 50%, 20%, 30%, whatever, if you have 100 minutes, even easier, right? And we would meet two weeks after and. that student who shall remain nameless said, you've given me too much. I say, how can 100% of your practice time be too much to practice? So often? That's that's like a false belief or an excuse to go. There's so much. And that's the reason I can't do anything. But again, how do we eat an elephant? You know, take your first bite. How do you climb the mountain? Thank you. Birds. You take the first step and that's it. So how can we define that? The first step is too much for me. It's not. It's never work on the thing that's right in front of you and do the thing. But I'll tell you to. Wow, that bird was loud. And I'm sure enough, probably a cardinal or something. So the student in question. I think the false belief was that is before, regardless of the percentage before I get to see the master, my my teacher after, it means I have to have done. Everything is given me perfectly and that's where I go. Now just get started on this plan right? If you take karate, new jiu jitsu lessons, you will go. And regardless of how much you've improved, you will still show up to the studio the next time. If you take yoga classes, you will do the same thing. Just show up. Do your hygiene. So often that's a misperception to go like, well, there's a certain amount of things to do and have to churn through all this work and accomplish it. And check, check, check check, check. And it doesn't quite work like that. so the false belief is to having achieve something. But we have to think of the skills, ingredients. It's not like, oh, you've done your skills, your one and done. It's finished forever. That's just not going to work, right? So it's an idea to keep and keep the ball rolling. That will segue into my third topic. keep the ball rolling with these, these materials and just go and see the inputs or go to the next lesson regardless, because you don't have to have everything finished and perfect before you get input, before you get feedback. And the point is just to show up, to take the first step, or the second or the third or the fourth, and to keep using this as to not still fuel that false belief, that sort of mindset going like, I can't do it. And now I have the perfect excuses because there's so much and I haven't done it all, and therefore it explains why, I say I still suck or I can't do the thing. Let's not have that discourage you, right? You can show up to your practice plan with, you know, a good mood, a good mindset with knowledge of the specific materials. Use a timer again, kitchen timer, just to be to be very cognizant of the kind of time you you apply and have this idea that you're going towards a certain set of skills and not going, you know, this is a workload, again, like, I have my job and I have to to turn through all these files. I have these customers to serve or whatever it is, or have these, holes to dig or these. I'm looking at a car like these tires to change. Yes, but at the same time, this is not exactly how the the craft of learning guitar and just guitar words of this. What a three. That's awesome. Okay, so third topic, interestingly, a student really close to me, hesitated in sending in a video. And that's another big obstacle, you know, remember the first one? The obstacle is that made up? I have to work on all these skills. The second obstacle is, oh, there's too much. Right. And therefore it explains by. And the third one is I don't want to I don't want to play for you. Nothing. Mark. I heard that several times. That's why I'm making this video to I'm going to start to get winded, by the way. And here's the the take. My student said, if I film my video of Autumn leaves or whatever, it was the exercise, I really know what you're going to tell me is that so you have a crystal ball. So, you know, you know what I'm going to tell you? I'm an expert. And of course, you're paying me to look at your stuff and to give you lessons and to give you a plan and to give you feedback on your videos. And I've, you know, spent the past 15 years being really passionate about helping thousands of people do that. And now you're filming Autumn leaves. You're watching it on your phone answering, I don't want to send this to Mark because I the students already know what he's going to propose. Cool. Wait, where are you taking gathering that information from and what is that like? What is that thing I'm going to say? And the answer was simple. You're going to tell me to play it faster. You're going to tell me to play better. And here's another very small moment, the same as no, you don't have to learn your 12 skills 12 positions before you improvise. The same thing is, no, it's not because there is too much practice that you're not making progress, you're not focused. And thirdly, no, it's not true that this is the feedback. That's what people see when they're practicing and trying to learn something, and they assume that they are so sorry. When did they assume they already know what what the next steps are? But again, it's like, well, you haven't really traveled this road, so how could you know? And that's another facepalm because it's what's right in front of you, which is, oh, it's not as good as I thought it would be. It's not as fast as I thought it would be. So therefore, these two things are in my way and it's a made up obstacle. Again, this is a video about the obstacles. And I say, well, you don't know what you don't know, right? You don't know, you don't know the things that you cannot see and cannot hear. And hopefully through the feedback, my job, our job in the accelerator program link in the description is, of course, to have you hear these things that you don't quite hear yet. So it's more of about a change of perspective on what you're doing, rather than telling you if it's good or bad. And by giving feedback to I think I looked at a school committee we have like 2200 videos for which I've given feedback on how many times do you think I heard Autumn leaves played wrong? You know, how many times do you think I wrote Jimmy Bruno style? Played better, played faster? Never. I've never done that. So we can point out, hey, this is what you were trying to achieve. This was the goal of your video reality check. Let's just look at this. You've done this. Well, that well that. Well, this is the thing that you should work on. Or a couple of things you could work on that would have the most high impact on your playing. So there's a school yard. My son's going to go to school that school next year. So you may hear the screams and the kids, etc.. oh yes. They're really going at it, probably like a soccer game or something, you know, kids. So we'll look at the goal of your video to do a full sweep 360 Reality Check. And then we'll go that thing or these two things are really the things that could have the most impact on your playing if you worked on them. So by when do you think you can fix this thing and submit another video? Or, you know, the feedback may simply be pointing out good, good good good. Look at this. You're 80% plus move on. Check mark. Move to the next exercise. Right. But this is completely custom. Oh I just felt a ring drop. I hope this doesn't ruin the video on the camera, but the thing is, there's always feedback. There's always knowledge to be gathered. Especially if you grab a teacher or a specialist or a friend that has better ears than you. And it's not true. That's that's the only feedback you're gonna get. This is a and if he's watching Scott that's for you. It's going no, no, of course not. Of course there's way more. There's more and more and large possibilities to see what what you could beat. Also crossing the street to walking my own neighborhood. Crazy. so yeah, this is a suburb of Ottawa for anyone interested, but who it's called gets, you know, beautiful area. I live in the whole the whole area near the mountains and the national park. Beautiful. Lots of, lots of, you know, one story houses, not condos with the word bungalows, lots of bungalows, lots of, retired and semi-retired people. Amazing. Like most of the clients I work with on the on the website, actually. So. So, yeah, there's always custom, very compassionate, logical and sensible and really useful feedback to be given. And now we're just starting to get some raindrops. So I'm going to end the video. I think it's perfect cuz this is my cue from nature to go Mark, you got to shut up and get back in the studio and teach some, some actual YouTube videos where you actually use studio setting. So enjoy! I hope this makes sense and please keep me posted if you have any questions in the comments, of course. Browse to Jazz Guitar Lessons dot net for and the ebooks called the Pinnacle Method. It's an e-book if you sign up, also send your free course, which is for videos on that method. And not just necessarily, you know, more scales and chords and more tunes to learn, but the framework in which you can apply regardless where you pick your musical materials for. So looking forward to seeing you in there. Take care. Bye.
